Why Large Instagram Accounts Switch to Private

Aug 27, 2018

The summer of 2018 started actively for Instagram with a series of innovations. Yet, there are some strange things happening here, too. This oddity lies in the fact that Instagram meme accounts that have millions of followers have started to switch their profiles from the public to private. What’s the point? Why hide your content and lose potential followers? The answers to these questions will surprise you a lot. InstaBF, one of the most recognizable Instagram and IGTV providers of the industry, will investigate whether turning to private accounts can boost in engaging new followers or not.

Why Meme Accounts Go Private

Have you ever stuck a situation when you receive a direct message named “hilarious meme”, you open it and find something like “Photo is unavailable”? To open the photo, you have to follow the user. Such situations have started to bombard Instagram since the beginning of 2018. This is a relatively new tactic of forcing non-followers to request an access before they can view the promised post. Ordinary users were mildly to say dissatisfied with such a behavior of major Instagram accounts. They even spread posts encouraging to make it illegal for meme accounts to be private. However, this tendency doesn’t seem to drop. On the contrary, more and more big accounts switch to private accounts to make users follow them to view their posts. Among them, you can even find such a big name as Everlane, a direct-to-consumer fashion brand.

So, let’s find out more about the reasons that drive big Instagram accounts to switch from public to private.

Getting More Followers

Obviously, the major reason for turning to a private account is attracting more followers, as we have already said. In fact, making the account with a huge number of followers private can be described as tying a red velvet band around it – it seems as a real gift and tugs at Instagrammers’ curiosity. Believe it or not, this strategy works perfectly! For instance, the owner of @drunkpeopledoingthings states that when its account on Insta was public, it was getting around 10, 000 followers per week. Yet, once it went private, this number rose to 100, 000! The 10x follower growth is a real trigger for even mega-popular Instagrammers to use this tactic, isn’t it?

Retaining Followers

The next but not least important reason for turning to a private account is keeping your followers back from hitting the Unfollow button. You see, it’s much easier to unfollow a public account being sure you can follow it whenever you wish. Yet, once you want to unfollow a private account, a pop-up message appears reminding you that you will have to wait for your request to be accepted once you regret and want to follow that account again. Believe, most people simply prefer to keep following.

Protecting Your Content

Another solid reason for turning to a private account is protecting your content. This way you have more control over who can interact with the content you post. Surely, this doesn’t give you a guarantee to prevent other users from stealing your content, yet, however, feeling more control over it makes you feel calmer.

Additionally, this way large accounts can block some users they don’t want to interact with their content and be certain they won’t have any access to it. Unlike in the case of a private account, public accounts still give an option to access from the web or other sources.

Conclusion

After all these, you may be hesitating whether to turn your account private, too or not. Well, it’s worth to mention that this tactic can work only in case you have millions or at least hundreds of thousands of followers. If you are an ordinary Instagrammer who fights for his place under the sun named Instagram, it’s definitely better for you to keep your account public and try to attract new followers using the Explore Page (we’ve already explained how you can do this in one of our previous posts), Insta Stories, hashtags, communities, etc.